UNDERATED for LEGO Ideas: January 2017

Welcome to another edition of UNDERATED For LEGO Ideas, the January 2017 edition! Although this post is once again late, all the featured projects had landed on LEGO Ideas in January.

Preamble

The great news is that UNDERATED has started to gain traction. Some of you have reached out to mention that you like the content, which I really appreciate.

There was a recent comment left on SilentMode.tv about my retired Mascoteers project, amid the controversy surrounding LEGO’s new BrickHeadz. It was suggested that people didn’t acknowledge the Mascoteers – as opposed to deliberately ignoring them – because I hadn’t done enough promotion.

It reminded me of an important lesson from crowdfunding. Projects have to be advertised in order to gain support and interest, and the main promoter should always be the project owner. If anything I feel like I do too much promoting – though perhaps on the wrong channels – because I’m usually the only person promoting my work.

With that said: all the promotion in the world will make no difference to people who aren’t interested. Will they take interest in, or even acknowledge your work, once they find out about it? The answer should speak for itself.

This castle building kit contains just about everything one needs to design and build their own castle. Even those who aren’t big into castles should find some enjoyment out of this project, because it comes with all the necessary brick-built components to put a castle together.

Of course, the project lends itself to combining multiple copies to create a large miniature display, just like microscale cities that became popular all of a sudden. This would also make a great set, once assembled, to experiment with different castle building styles. Where would be the best place to put those trees? Would the houses be located within the walls? Extra components could be made to make your castle stand out from the rest… Or, like the preceding Micro World sets, this could be one glorious parts pack.

Given there was so much hype and excitement for Minecr..aft, it’s a damn shame – but a sign of the times – there are only 56 supporters behind this castle at the moment.

What’s not to like about this model of a Vespa scooter? Just looking at the amazing build; it really helps that it’s an actual build. I’m really curious about the building techniques. The clever use of parts give it a very smooth and almost non-LEGO appearance.

I very much doubt that this model has any swooshability, but it would make a great display piece – especially for someone who is passionate about scooters.

This is the highest supported project on UNDERATED this month, with 450 supporters to date.

I’ll be the first to admit that history isn’t my strong point, and therefore I know nothing about French theatre. Anyone in the same boat will be glad to know there’s plenty of information about it on this project’s page, along with plenty of model photos.

Even if the information goes over your head, there’s no denying this is a very elegant model. It lends itself well to photo ops for minifigures, as well as stop-motion animation for anyone looking to do something different.

Particularly interesting is the choice of minifigures for this project: each of the minifigure parts can be chopped and changed for different roles in each of the plays. (Let’s be honest: that’s not what most people think of when the “diversity” buzzword pops up!)

So far this project has 282 supporters: a great start, but surely it deserves more.

Venturing into new territory, this trio of cactuses purely serves as a desktop ornament. These low-maintenance plants were designed for low light environments, where even real cactuses have a hard time thriving.

As well as the simple but effective building techniques displayed in the photo, one thing I particularly like about this project is that it demonstrates three distinct types of cactuses. Most of us are familiar with the two leftmost ones, but the one on the right is probably new to us.

In any case, even though I have two real cactuses in the workshop, I would be proud to have one of these. I would just have to remember not to water them! At the moment the project has 160 supporters, which is around 53 for each cactus.

There’s no denying that this is a very faithful, and very well executed model of the titular character from Dexter’s Labroatory. Dexter himself is probably overdue for realisation as a minifigure, but you never know: he might appear in LEGO Dimensions.

Apart from being a well executed model, it doesn’t appear to have any use. However, as was hinted in the project description, it could be retrofitted, reimagined or upcycled to be something else. For me, the model screams to be turned into a piggy bank.

With 135 supporters at the moment, it could be doom and gloom… Perhaps UNDERATED will help make things go “boom”.

That horizontal line means we’re at the end of this post, so join me near the end of this month for another selection of LEGO Ideas projects. Fingers crossed for the projects featured this month!